The use of e-mail as a means of communication has become very common. Indeed, in many situations, e-mail has replaced the standard post letter, the telephone and the facsimile as the preferred means of communication. This has lead to increases in the volume of e-mail being sent and received; so much so that in many cases people find it difficult to manage their e-mail messages leading to the undesirable situation that some e-mail messages may not be timely dealt with or may not be dealt with at all.
Conventional e-mail clients typically provide users with one or more automated means of assisting them with managing their e-mail messages. Usually such tools are end-user-configured filters and rules that may, for example, affect which e-mail messages are displayed (in the case of a filter) and may automatically perform some action (in the case of a rule). While such filters/rules prove helpful in some circumstances, as e-mail management issues still persist notwithstanding their usage, improvement in this area might be beneficial.